My 3 Biggest Predictions for Digital Marketing in 2018 and Beyond

My 3 Biggest Predictions for Digital Marketing in 2018 and Beyond

When it comes to digital marketing, everything is constantly changing. In fact, the only thing that stays the same is the fact that you KNOW there will be change coming. Very soon. In every aspect of digital marketing. With that being said, here are my top 3 biggest predictions for the future of digital marketing this year:

First, video. Video will takeover the online world! I love the way video can help businesses promote their services to their customers. I am going all in on the fact that video will be the next big thing in 2018. Everyone is jumping on the band wagon and starting to create video this year, and I love it. You will see more and more videos published to Youtube and Vimeo, and many more traditional bloggers and podcasters seeing better conversions with video, therefore switching over, or at least doing both audio and video. All you need these days is a phone and content calendar (find out how I create mine here!) and you're off to the races with video, so if you haven't figure out your video strategy yet, 2018 is the year to do so! Don't hesitate to reach out and ask questions along the way.

Secondly, collaboration. Joining up with other like-minded individuals is HOT right now!! I believe in the next 12 months, we will see many businesses reach out to other bloggers with a similar social media following (or a bit smaller following) to collaborate on posts, guest blogs and more to help grow their audiences. I also think you will see a lot of video bloggers and web designers reaching out to others who have larger followings to help promote their products and services to each other's audiences by way of an event or similar meet-up type of situation. If you're a business, you really need to look out for businesses that are starting their video strategy and content and find those who are starting to build content. This is a great way to gain traction in growing your audience when you collaborate with someone who is eager to get their content out on the web. You can together provide a ton of value to both of your audience's and leverage each other's network to gain potential customers.

Finally, engagement. I believe that big time Instagram, Facebook and Twitter marketers will really start to focus on engagement this year. How can they get their followers to interact with each other? How can they build out a platform for others to share their thoughts and feelings in a smaller, more exclusive group? Start to build up an engagement strategy now so that you can pull in customers to interact with everything you do. They will get to know you, and down the road, it will pay off huge! Always keep engagement in the back of your mind when posting anything online.

These are the top three trends that I believe you will see more of this year. I think people will be hosting many events together, and collaborating with one another. I think business owners will constantly be on the look out for new ways to engage with their target audience, and overall everyone will be making a ton of video content! Watch out for growing Youtube channels, and meet up groups to join. They will be everywhere soon!!

Here are some trends that I hope die in 2018:

-Snapchat dog ears filter

-Email marketing to your entire list (keep it specific!!)

-Influencer marketing (the more Instagram models are paid to promote things, the less products they can actually push, and the conversion rates on these influencer-pushed product sales now directly correlates to these actions)